Now that's alien intelligence:
The she-cephalopod was filmed by the Blue Planet II crew as they were exploring the inky depths in South Africa, focusing on the magical world of marine forests. As series producer Mark Brownlow explains, "We may think of our ocean's as blue but there is another surprising world of the Green Seas. From towering undersea forests of giant kelp to vast prairies of sea grass, this is an almost Brothers Grimm fairy tale of all the strange and magical creatures that live within these secret worlds. Here sea dragons lurk, bizarre giant cuttlefish breed, and an ingenious octopus outwits a forest full of sharks."
Our tale of clever derring-do begins when a hungry pyjama shark goes to attack the octopus, who quickly inserts its tentacles into the shark's gills in an effort to suffocate it. Shark lets go; octopus skedaddles.
But then she does something truly remarkable, and something never before seen (by humans, at least). As the show's narrator, Sir David Attenborough, says: "The octopus is far from finished."
Caught in the open, she scrambles to the seafloor, attaches shells to her body with her suckers, and rolls up into a beautiful mosaic ball. The shark is left confused and by the time it seems to figure out what is going on, the octopus darts away, leaving the shark looking for her in the scattered detritus of her ersatz armor.
Clever. Maybe we should try teaching octopi sign language, as as we have other species.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:56AM
I found an injured octopus washed up on a beach in San Diego. I brought it home, and kept it in a spare tank (I used to breed tropical fish, so had many tanks). It recovered quickly, and displayed no fear of me, but was very curious. It would position itself to be able to watch whatever was going on in the room. Looked like a giant nose sitting on top of a rock (rarely hid-- usually only while eating. I thought it would be more shy and provided plenty of places for it to hide).
A few weeks later, I released it in a protected cove with lots of eel grass and rocks and such to hide in that was adjacent to the beach it had washed up on.
All that said, I would not recommend bothering one that you may find. I'm pretty sure it was much happier back in the ocean. And, it was a bit of a pita keeping it-- it shoved stuff into the filter tube breaking the filter/pump, escaped a couple times to go exploring, etc.